GanXingba Theater Presents Avatar: The Abridged Series is an abridged parody of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show is made by Youtube user GanXingba. The series makes jokes, such as running gags, plot spoilers, and little things like what/the way the person says. The most famous joke of the series is nicknaming Aang "Kung Fu Action Jesus".

Contents

History

GanXingba based the series off of LittleKuriboh's "Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series." In an interview, he stated that he decided to make it because at the time, he had just discovered Avatar and decided it would make a great Abridged series.

Before making the series he made a few other Avatar parodies: Avatar TV, Avatar: The Malevolent Evil of Demonic Doom, and the unofficial pilot "The Angst, Starring Prince Zuko", in which he used the Abridged Series' Zuko and Iroh voices.

For the first episode, GanXingba used a simple Windows Movie Maker program, and states that he's not proud of the pilot and downs himself because of it in a commentary.

After a few episodes, GanXingba made another Avatar parody called "The Day of Black Stache," in which he brought back the Abridged Series' Haru and parodies the Day of Black Sun episodes of Avatar.

After another episode, GanXingba was offered to make a new episode entitled "When It's Done" for the Comic Con that year. The episode parodied "The Western Air Temple" episode and how the series was coming to an end.

During production for Episode 8, GanXingba began changing every name of both the Abridged episodes and all other GanXingba Theater videos to not use Avatar, but either "ATAS" or "ATLA." Episode 8 was taking a longer time than one would think, because of the amount of time PsychoSilver took to edit, and GanXingba's new Inuyasha Parody. On February 7th, 2009, GanXingba uploaded Episode 8, and in a day got over 2,000 views.

Hallmarks

Humor

Characters are portrayed as either the same with very different quirks or completely different. For example, while Aang is still the Avatar and is the leader of Team Avatar, he is very egotistical and cocky. In contrast, Jet is portrayed as a psychotic, deep voiced, paranoid, high-and-mighty badass. Another example is Zuko, who (even though he keeps his basic character traits) is a whiny-voiced, weak, obsessive, somewhat "lame" crybaby obsessed with "making daddy love [him]."

The series also relies on a plethora of pop-cultural references to build its humor. Songs are in every episode, usually to build off from what a character said or did, included "Blinded by the Light", "Dude Looks Like a Lady", the theme title for Batman: The Animated Series, and "You Are A Pirate" from LazyTown.

"Kung-Fu Action Jesus"

At the end of each episode, GanXingba places movie/show clips, songs, or voices movie lines over a clip from that episode. (i.e., at the end of the first episode, when Aang asks Katara holding him in her hands the following line: "Who-who are you?" Katara starts, "I'm-" and is interrupted by Aang's "Pussy Galore, you say?") Another main humor usage is the series "one liners." It uses a style similar to Dane Cook's, emphasizing on words until they are humorous.

A popular recurring joke in Avatar: The Abridged Series involved the characters mentioning how the concept of the Avatar is similar to that of a Kung-Fu Action Jesus. This helped influence the Kung-Fu Jesus television idiom alongside the fanbase of the RPG gameExodus. This trope was popularly used in the Family Guy episode "North by North Quahog",[2] as well as an episode of South Park. Although GanXingba states that he does enjoy relying on running gags for humor, this joke has appeared in the series four times thus far.

Cast

List of episodes

Unofficial pilot

Ep. #

Title

Written by

Directed by

Original US airdate

1-101

"The Angst, Starring Prince Zuko"

GanXingba

GanXingba

May 7, 2007

Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation was banished for nearly two years out at sea following his Agni Kai with his father, pop star Fire LordOzai, and now tells his story to the viewers of how, to this very day, he wishes to capture the Avatar and "make daddy love [him]" again.

Season 1

Episode 1 (The Boy in the Iceberg) 4 1/2 Stars

Episode 2 (The Avatar Returns & The Southern Air Temple) 5 Stars

Episode 3 (The Warriors of Kyoshi & Imprisoned) 5 Stars

Episode 4 (The King of Omashu & Winter Solstice Part 1: The Spirit World) 5 Stars

Episode 5 (Winter Solstice Part 2: Avatar Roku & cameo of The Cave of Two Lovers)

Episode 6 (Jet) 5 Stars

Episode 7 (The Waterbending Scroll, The Great Divide, The Storm, & The Fortuneteller) 5 Stars

Episode 8 (Blue Spirit, The Deserter)

Episode 9 (Bato of The Water Tribe)

Episode 10 (The Northern Air Temple)

Episode 11 (The Waterbending Master)

Note

Most of the other videos show that GanXingba made have continuity to each other. The list of chronological dates are:

Characters

Katara is portrayed in a Mary-Sue like way. She is completely oblivious to Aang's romantic feelings about her. She also goes to ridiculous lengths to be with boys she finds attractive, but is often unlucky.

Katara goes through two vocal evolutions over the course of the ATAS chronology, reflecting her character changes. In The Waterbending Master, she becomes 'Battle Mode Katara', with an actual female voice rather than Ganxingba faking a woman's voice. She is highly aggressive and first appears right before her duel with Pakku. Her second evolution is to 'Schwarzenegger Katara', a drill sergeant-esque powerhouse, which appears in The Western Air Temple. This second change is probably meant to reflect Katara's increasingly aggressive nature in Book 3.

Sokka is seen as a comic relief character and possesses no real skill (Katara even remarks that he "couldn't even fight off a short bus full of nuns"). He often makes odd exclamations such as "Holy crud-scones!" He also has a world-weary demeanor and once exclaims that he hates his life.

Iroh is Jewish. Instead of tea, he has an obsession with "bad Jewish wine". He shows little to no compassion for Zuko at all (at one point even saying "Don't look at me, he's not my kid."). He also frequently uses borrowed Yiddish words like "Schmuck" and the like. He is also implied to have had many relationships in the past, and is a womanizer. He also has a habit of going naked around five o'clock.

Aang is portrayed as older with an almost SpongeBob-like voice. He brags somewhat about being the Avatar, constantly seeks attention and love from Katara, and holds a low opinion of Sokka in general.

Aang was born in the Southern Air Temple. When he was 12, he was told by the Monks that he was the Avatar. Although perfectly content with this, he later overheard a conversation between them. They said that as the Avatar, Aang could not eat Lucky Charms any more; only Raisin Bran. Shocked and angered, Aang ran away in the middle of a storm (which Aang was surprised at since the weatherman said that the "plot-device storm" would be the next week) and found himself falling. Thinking it was a brilliant plan, he froze himself in a block of ice and stayed there for 100 years. He awakens 100 years later, after Katara breaks the block of ice because it was an "iceberg pinata". According to Sokka, such pinatas contain "giant pieces of chocolate shaped like people" placed there "in ancient times". Opening his eyes in her arms, Aang asks who she is, to which she answers with "an optimist".

Still dazed, he looks around, asking why he's in an Iceberg Pinata. He then began searching for Appa, and when finding him woke him up. He then started to introduce himself to Katara and Sokka, who in turn began to constantly say "skepticism" and "optimism" instead of normal conversation, even as they mount Appa, who will not fly. Aang then turns to the two siblings and tells them they're going to have to stop doing the whole optimism/skepticism thing.

Aang, now at the Tribe, has a dream of what happened in the storm, and Katara then wakes him up. Introducing him to the Village, he cuts her off and flies away, saying he's going to go goof off and play with animals. As
Aang starts to chase after some penguins, Katara asks him if he could maybe train her to Waterbend "and stuff." Aang, getting off the subject, remarks "Yeah, that'd great and all, but you know what would be more fun? Danger," and then takes her to a trapped ship that he wants to explore. Inside, she tells him about what's happened, and later, he trips a booby-trap. This causes a giant flare to shoot into the air, and Aang says "Well that sucked...a lot."

Aang, Katara, and Sokka return to pick up some stuff from Aang's "crib" at the Southern Air Temple. There Aang finds a lemur and claims that it's a kitty. Sokka tries to tell him that it's not a kitty, but this upsets Aang and he goes into the Avatar State. He responds with, "Okay Aang, it's a kitty!", which calms him down. Aang proceeds to name his new "kitty" Pedro. Then they leave the air temple because Aang forgot why they went there.

Jet is portrayed as a bad ass, although he also appears to suffer from severe paranoia. Instead of wanting to flood the village to kill Fire Nation soldiers, he wants to do it to stop Martians. He also refers to the Fire Nation as "THEM!" and says they are like The Freemasons, Templars and Men In Black combined, goes through people's garbage and has an obsession with shoelaces.

Bumi is shown to be completely insane and holds great interest in doing drugs. He explains to Aang that he is the way he is because of "steroids and crack cocaine". He also appears to be a psychopath; going so far as to trap Katara and Sokka and say "Oh no, I was definitely going to kill them".

Suki often pokes fun at Sokka (saying that she doesn't date comic relief characters and that she dressed up Sokka in a Kyoshi Warriors uniform because he was girly.) However, she also seems to think that he's sexy. When asked to join them and become a main character, she responds "I like being a minor character." She is apparently turned on by violence.

Appearing in the tenth episode, Teo is the paraplegic son of the Mechanist who lives with his father in the Northern Air Temple. Despite being crippled, his father has designed several quirky inventions in order to help him live his hopes and dreams; his state in life is referred by himself as "handy-capable". He speaks with a lisp.